


Pandora's Box

by limitlessrose (shinealightrose)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M, Mecha, Mentions of war but it's not central to the plot, Pilots and Engineers, Some sexy times, Space fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:48:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23138743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightrose/pseuds/limitlessrose
Summary: “You been hanging around any pilot locker rooms lately,” says Doyoung pointedly, brutally.“No? Maybe.”Lucas snickers.Yuta continues. “Oh, come on, that was one time.”And then Yangyang asks, “Was this before or after you nailed Sicheng in Hanger Deck 3?”“I never kiss and tell.”
Relationships: Dong Si Cheng | WinWin/Nakamoto Yuta
Comments: 17
Kudos: 179
Collections: Winwin Fic Fest Round 1





	Pandora's Box

**Author's Note:**

> Written for prompt #A081
> 
> Thank you mods for all your patience with me! And to my prompter, this was suuch a good prompt. I hope I have been able to to it even a smidge of justice.

There’s this ridiculous rumor going around the ship that Yuta is quite the catch in the sack. Yuta doesn’t know who started it, but he hasn’t honestly worked that hard to dispel it. The ship is small with barely a hundred regular crew members, an odd fifty or so more who rotate in and out, like the officers and their lackeys doing routine inspections, visiting engineers here for upgrades, jockey pilots who think they’re better than everyone else. It’s the last group, especially, which has their eye on Yuta today. 

“I think they heard,” whispers Lucas, mouth half full of regulation meat substitute. 

“Heard what?” says Yangyang. 

Lucas grins, a disgusting picture of undigested mush. He bumps his shoulder against Doyoung. They’re all sleeveless and sweaty. The mess hall at noon smells a gross combination of unwashed man and something Yuta imagines shares the scent of baby food. 

_ Yu-ta, _ Lucas mouths silently. 

Doyoung sighs. Yangyang laughs. Yuta sits back, stretches his arms up high over his head, a smug look etched across his face. 

“Oh yeah?” he says. 

The rumor is only around three weeks old. 

“Which rumor?” asks Jeno. 

The question is a fair one. There are  _ lots _ of rumors about Yuta. That’s he’s the son of a defamed commander down on earth. That he flunked out of the pilot training to become an engineer. That he single-handedly beat Major Moon Taeil in a wicked game of Mars Wars, winning every single card in the deck until the major kicked him out of the officers' quarters, five hours later in the wee hours of the morning…

Some of those rumors aren’t even false. 

But the one that really kicks, the one Yuta is almost ashamed to admit isn’t true, is the story involving him and one hotshot pilot, Dong Sicheng. Years could go by and Yuta suspects his crewmates  _ still _ won’t believe nothing happened between him and Sicheng during those three hours they were locked in together on Hanger Deck 3 due to a malfunctioning airlock. 

All anyone knows is that Sicheng won’t speak of the incident, but he walked out with a limp. 

“Think they’ll be after me soon?” says Yuta, finishing his flex and plopping back down to eat. 

“Oh yeah,” says Yangyang. “They’ll be jumping you before nightfall.” 

“To pound your head into pulp,” Doyoung finally contributes. 

“Excuse me? Who says anyone wants me for anything other than this?” says Yuta, offended, indicating his crotch. 

Jeno snorts. 

Lucas is still laughing. “Don’t you know how precious Sicheng is to the pilots? You defiled their ace. Now nothing’s going to stop you from ending up dead in a broom closet.”

“Precious? Him?” puffs Yuta. 

Not that he disagrees. Maybe with the phrasing though. Everyone knows Sicheng is the best mecha pilot this side of the Asteroid Belt. He may be lean in his zero suit, but out at the front, during actual combat, everyone has seen the video captures of him maneuvering his mech, the  _ Winwin _ , with his gunner partner Renjun. Yuta’s probably seen it more than most. He’s a handsome pilot, skilled and dedicated, a master in the art. Yuta isn’t responsible for the leaked footage that went net viral under the title  _ Hottie in a Hot-Bot _ , though he is secretly impressed at whoever did.

It’s just Yuta prefers a different image of famed Dong Sicheng. The ones he’s been privy to see in a few lone moments aboard their cruiser. The more sedated Sicheng, the quiet one. Off the loading dock and without his mecha. Without Renjun too, that little snake. 

Yuta likes the image of one Dong Sicheng, in his regular attire. Maybe bending over to knab a dropped standard issue shoulder bag. Maybe Sicheng staying a little too long in such a position while he digs for some personal item or other. 

Yeah, Yuta likes that one the best. Doesn’t mean he has to talk about it to his mates. 

“You been hanging around any pilot locker rooms lately,” says Doyoung pointedly, brutally. 

“No? Maybe.”

Lucas snickers. 

Yuta continues. “Oh, come on, that was  _ one  _ time.” 

And then Yangyang asks, “Was this before or after you nailed Sicheng in Hanger Deck 3?”

“I never kiss and tell.”

  
  
  
  


Truth be told, the Terran cruiser  _ Pandora _ on which Yuta and his crewmates have been aboard for the last four years isn’t that close to the center of action. There’s a war on beyond the Asteroid Belt, and has been one for three decades. Yuta’s own uncle, and one of Doyoung’s grandmothers, have been counted among the casualties that have claimed so many lives since the moon station on Europa declared its independence and joined forces with the rebel forces on Titan. 

Yuta was born during wartime. He spent his childhood reliving the battles from every media source he could consume. At age sixteen he joined the Terran Academy, graduated three years later, and now here he still is, twenty-three years old watching better soldiers and pilots ship in and out of the  _ Pandora _ on respite from active duty. 

Not to say he doesn’t do an important job for the war effort. A good engineer is more valuable than gold was in the olden days. Definitely more reliable than the AI fighter drones sent to the front line to repair damaged mecha. Crews like Sicheng’s are sent away from the fray to recover and regroup after a series of combat encounters, an ever-churning rotation of mech, single-manned, doubles, or even larger, to ensure no one squadron is ever too exhausted, or their mecha too banged up, to continue the fight. 

It’s a pretty grim way to live, but Yuta is quite used to it by now. Also, it helps that he’s never been assigned to one of the combat cruisers which deploys the mecha in and out of battle. Life on the  _ Pandora _ is much more simplistic, structured, dare one say sometimes… boring.

That’s where the gossip comes into play. 

It’s been two weeks since that  _ thing _ in the hanger deck, one week since the latest batch of resting pilots arrived, and six whole days since  _ everyone _ apparently found out about… it. 

But what do they actually know? That’s what Yuta will never say. 

“Hey, Nakamoto. What’re your hours today?”

“Third shift. Break at 1500 hours.” Yuta winks at the new kid, Hendery. He’s only been on one flight since apparently graduating second place at the piloting academy. His crewmate Dejun was first. Yuta likes him though. For an up and coming hotshot pilot, Hendery hasn’t yet learned how to be an ass. 

“Why?” he asks.

Hendery gives him a winning smile. “There’s some weird light on the underside of my mech dash. Somebody told me you were the guy to ask.”

“You want me to turn some more on, or get yours off.” 

Hendery, to his credit, doesn’t even blink. He leans against the wall outside of the engineers’ bunk hall and grins. 

“So… you and…”

“Doyoung? Yep, we’ll get right on it just after roll call.” 

Hendery doesn’t try again. “Thanks, man. Be seeing you.”

“Yup.”

Doyoung doesn’t say anything until they’re a few corridors away. It’s early yet. Yuta hasn’t had his morning sludge. He still thinks he’s pretty slick. Doyoung even agrees, but then he just has to poke the beast.

“Nothing happened with Sicheng. Isn’t that right?”

Yuta doesn’t stop walking. Places to be, things to do, pilots to ogle if he can time it right. 

“Nah. Nothing like the rumor is saying.”

It doesn’t pay to lie to Doyoung. They graduated together, and they don’t always get along, but there’s a bond there Yuta doesn’t have with say, the much younger Yangyang, despite how much he loves the kid. Mecha Engineers may be one big family, but Doyoung is like his brother. 

“That’s what I thought.”

Doyoung’s silent for a moment. They’re the earliest to roll call, mainly because Yuta likes getting ready for the day with just that much extra time to chill, get on his suit, find his assignment, run his hands over whichever piece of equipment is his to repair for the day. There are two things Yuta admires most in life: good looking metal, and men. 

“So, what really happened?” 

“Just got stuck.”

“Yeah? That’s it?”

“Yep.”

So no, Yuta never lies to Doyoung, but he also doesn’t feel the need to always tell him the bare honest truth.

“And you two sat there for hours doing… nothing?”

“Now that, I did  _ not _ say.” 

  
  
  


Around three weeks since the incident, another rumor starts up as well. This one based on a few more seemingly substantiated facts. 

Dong Sicheng, doesn’t seem to  _ like _ Nakamoto Yuta.

He spares him not a look, not a glance, not even a word. When Yuta shows up one morning to check out the  _ Winwin _ for a routine inspection, he isn’t there. 

Renjun is there instead, giving disdainful looks whenever Jeno disagrees on the best way to improve the targeting function. 

“Anyone can just  _ maintain _ it,” Jeno is painstakingly explaining, “but look, I replaced this feature on the  _ Zeus _ just last week and Jungwoo said it’s been functioning seven times better than-”

“I don’t give a crap what works best on the Zeus, this is  _ my _ ship, and I know how to handle it. Are you saying my stats aren’t better than Jungwoo’s? I took down  _ twenty-one _ drones in three minutes at the skirmish over Ceres. Ask Jungwoo how many he took down. Actually, I can tell you.  _ Eleven. _ ”

Yuta smiles but keeps his comments to himself, admiring Jeno’s persistence and Renjun’s ego from a safe distance away, higher up, above the gunner’s station, in the cockpit of the  _ Winwin _ to be exact. 

Mecha are beautiful creations from the outside, Yuta has always thought that. As tall as a fighter drone is long, sleek and functional in the image of a giant robotic man. A deadly beauty, and built entirely from the hands of men like himself. But to be inside one… even more ephemeral. 

Yuta perches on the platform where Sicheng usually stands, admiring the comm lights, the physical supports, the wires that connect to a pilot’s suit. It’s a thing a wonder, this place where man and machine become intimate-

“Ahem.” 

Yuta pulls his hand away from the thrust handle and looks down, shaken from his thoughts. 

He grins. 

“Sicheng, good morning.”

The pilot is not meeting his eyes. He stands at an angle as if pointedly avoiding Yuta. With hands clasped behind his back, and a faint line of perspiration on his brow, he says the first words to Yuta that anyone has heard in weeks. 

“Get out?”

It’s not an order. More like a weak suggestion. But Yuta would never ignore anything Sicheng says, demand, request, anything. 

He jumps down onto the platform halfway to the ground, then turns around and slowly, oh so slowly climbs down the assembled ladder. Once he’s at eye level with Sicheng, Yuta meanders up to the pilot, beseeching. 

“Something the matter? If you want me to come back… I can finish up this inspection… later tonight?”

For five whole seconds, Sicheng does nothing. Then, the first hint of a crack. He rolls his eyes. 

“Renjun,” he redirects. “We’re wanted on the training deck. Suit up.”

“With pleasure,” says the gunner snippety, shoving an immovably polite Jeno from his station. “Thanks for the advice. So sorry, we won’t ever be taking it.”

Yuta doesn't stay to watch Sicheng get into his craft. The vision of Sicheng climbing the ladder right in front of his face is quite enough action to get him through the week.

  
  
  
  


Like all things though, this tension between them which has been built up by the crew and sustained by the pilots  _ must _ come to an end. 

It’s kind of a shame really. Yuta has enjoyed this little game. But in a single day, after the third mecha pilot and his gunner have come by to give him a shameless look, laced with a sneer, Yuta decides to give up and go find Sicheng himself. 

“Anyone seen the hottest pilot in the whole wide solar system around today?” he addresses no less than a dozen mixed crew members. 

Doyoung sighs. It’s the end of their shift, everybody’s tired. Yuta needs a shower but he’s just got this  _ itch _ . One that won’t be satiated by that very tidy offer he received yesterday from Jung Jaehyun, the pilot for the Zeus. 

_ “Heard you’re good. Care to have some good times with me?” _

And really, a couple months ago, maybe Yuta would have taken him up on the offer. Not now though. Now, he’s got his sights on a different person entirely. 

“If you mean Sicheng, he probably doesn’t want to see you,” says Jaemin, a rotten little gunner. 

“He should be coming off the training deck about now,” says Lucas, louder, covering up the last of Jaemin’s words. 

Yuta shoots Lucas a winning smile. Such a good bro. “Thanks, man. See you later.”

As it turns out, Lucas is correct. But so is Jaemin. 

Yuta spots Sicheng halfway across the deck and it takes all his concentration not to fall flat on his ass right then and there. Sicheng has just come out of his mecha, an exhausted and sweaty mess. He’s surrounded by three of the ground crew, including Yangyang who’s already getting suited up with his kit to climb into the cockpit after Sicheng’s descent. Even from this distance he can see some sparks flying around, sparks which should be in Yuta’s chest, not inside a mecha. 

Sicheng looks a bit frazzled, his face full of heady determination though as he yells something to Yangyang. Renjun is by his side, and this is where Yuta wants to screech something bold and inappropriate, but Renjun is  _ stripping _ Sicheng. 

“What happened?” he says to the nearest person to him, a kid he barely recognizes as one of the junior medics, Jisung. 

“Mech malfunction? No one’s confirmed.”

Yuta breezes past him toward the center of activity. There are some minor burns on Sicheng’s shoulder, a scrape on the back of his neck. From the part of his zero suit already removed by Renjun, Yuta notes how the suit took most of the damage, protecting its wearer, as designed. Jisung’s senior medic Kun is already applying a salve to the skin while Sicheng ignores him, spitting softly at Yangyang even as another stream of sparks fly out from the pilot’s station. 

“Who serviced my mecha last? Wasn’t Nakamoto on the rotation?”

Still too far away to defend himself, Yuta keeps silent, pushing past the crowd as Yangyang’s strained voice answers for him. “Command moved our shifts around and … it… was me who looked it over yesterday…”

Sicheng huffs. He looks ready to tackle somebody. Renjun holds him back by the dangling zero suit zipped down but still tethered to his waist. 

“Someone say my name?” says Yuta, breathless, but beside Sicheng at last. 

The pilot ignores him. He’s still glaring at Yangyang as he whisper-hisses to Renjun, “Tell that kid to get out then if he can’t be bothered to check things over properly.”

“Hey, do you want me to fix it instead?” says Yuta. 

Sicheng turns around. His whole chest is bare, his eyes glazed over. He looks right past Yuta though to where the pilots major Moon Taeil is making his appearance on deck. Yuta has to take a back seat as Sicheng answers his questions and then asks to file a complaint about the lack of notification for the change in the engineers schedule. It’s not a complete loss. Yuta has plenty of time to admire the half of Sicheng’s body on display, and not even the rudimentary bandage Kun has applied to his neck can take away from the pilot’s sexiness. 

But as Jaemin said, he doesn’t seem to care about Yuta at all. 

He turns back to glare at Yangyang who is already hard at work in the pilot’s seat, face flushed red half from embarrassment, half from exertion, as wrenches grate and more sparks fly. 

“Renjun, you stay and watch,” he tells the gunner, evidently not pleased at all at the major’s decision to let Yangyang fix his mistakes. 

Then Sicheng departs. 

“Sicheng? Sicheng?” says Yuta, a lost puppy in the jumble on deck. No one stops him from following though. He trails after the pilot from the training deck down the hallway, a mere echo of his voice lingering in the steadily more quiet corridors. 

Still, Sicheng doesn’t acknowledge him. Not, at least, until he reaches the pilot’s bunkroom and the door swings shut before Yuta’s eyes, without its customary lock… 

Yuta smiles to himself and gives the heavy door a little push. 

Apart from Sicheng, the room is empty. Twenty single layer bunks line the walls, ten per side, most with their curtains pulled open and secured according to regulation. Room enough for one full squadron of mecha pilots. The gunners are roomed elsewhere. At the far end of the room, Sicheng pauses before his own bunk, suit still hanging onto his hips by a thread. His exposed skin is glistening in the cooler air. Sweat lingers to the back of his neck, dripping down between his shoulder blades. His arms swell with goosebumps. 

Sicheng fumbles with the remaining zippers of his suit, some of them clearly damaged by the accident. He still doesn’t look up as Yuta approaches. Instead, his voice is small and biting. “Why are you standing there. Help me with this damned thing.”

Yuta laces his fingers over Sicheng’s frustrated knuckles, gingerly pushing them out of the way as he gives the zipper at Sicheng’s hip a yank, two yanks, then another greater one, and the suit finally gives. Yuta rounds on the other side, does the same with the zipper there even though it pulls down with ease. 

There’s a spice in the air. Yuta can smell it, craves it. He leans over the uninjured side of Sicheng’s shoulder, noses the skin there. Sicheng shivers, a barely-there reaction as the suit falls finally to his feet. His hands reach back, seeking Yuta’s, and he tugs until his hips are caged from behind. The pads of Yuta’s fingertips graze a pair of skintight black underwear. Sichehg oh so subtly reclines his taller frame into Yuta’s chest, head back, neck exposed. 

The bandages Kun applied earlier tickle Yuta’s skin. 

Yuta pushes him forward. “Hmm, not yet. You’re still injured.”

“So?”

Sicheng’s always spoken condescendingly to Yuta, when he dared to speak to him at all. It’s that deep, rough voice Yuta is most familiar hearing. In passing through the halls, occasionally in the mess hall when Yuta did something to infuriate him. The day they ended accidentally locked up together in Hanger Deck 3. This time, however, the pilot’s voice notches upward, pitch softening. 

_ So? _

“Shower for you. Let’s go.”

Yuta once again overlaps his fingers with Sicheng’s, palms together though this time as he slowly drags him toward a door farther back. Inside, he lets Sicheng remove the last of his clothing and angle himself beneath the steaming water of the showerhead. Yuta holds a thick towel over the applied bandages, occasionally dabbing at the exposed skin when Sicheng turns around, sometimes kissing the other side of his neck. 

All the while he admires Sicheng in profile, the way his skin reddens under the water, pink cheeks and fluttering eyelashes, the glorious rivulets of water running down his sculpted chest. He doesn’t touch anywhere else.  _ Won’t _ touch until Sicheng tells him to. 

But the pilot eventually turns away, grabbing another towel to dry himself and leaving the water running. 

“Your clothes are soaked,” is the last thing he says before reentering the bunkroom. 

Yuta watches him go, skin all on edge, heart rate fluttering. Then, finally, he grins and sheds his clothes. 

  
  
  


When Yuta emerges from the shower, freshly clean, Sicheng is nowhere in view. The curtain around his bunk, however, is partially open. 

Yuta lets himself in, knees sinking into a mattress way too hard. His body falling into another’s which is way too soft. He pulls the curtain shut, already dying from the moan Sicheng lets out as Yuta falls between his legs. 

It’s been way too long… 

“Tired again of keeping up the pretense?” Yuta whispers into his skin, nose running down those glorious abs toward his navel. 

“Shut up.”

“Hmm, you first.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


Lucas is the most in shock when Yuta sits down in the mess hall the following morning. 

“Dude, I thought you said nothing happened between you guys in that hanger deck!”

Yuta doesn’t acknowledge him. He’s busy ogling what surely looks like the best breakfast they’ve had in three days, a goopy kind of pancake, but heaven all the same. Doyoung clucks disapproving. Jeno, bless his heart, keeps silent altogether. Yangyang hasn’t been seen since yesterday, still busy fixing his mistakes on the  _ Winwin _ . Yuta heard Renjun hasn’t left him alone, too anxious over his and Sicheng’s precious baby. In Yangyang’s place, however, Hendery plops down, a wide grin on his face, distracting enough that Lucas turns his attention to him instead of Yuta. 

“What are you doing here. Pilots have their own table.”

“Yeah, and engineers have their own bunks. So I’ve been told.” He wags his eyebrows at Yuta. Which, once again, redirects Lucas’s attention. 

Yuta’s good at keeping silent though. It comes with the territory when your lover is an easily embarrassed and private person. Too bad half the pilots got a good view of Yuta waking up this morning, and now Sicheng  _ again _ won’t look in Yuta’s direction. He’s across the mess hall eating his own breakfast surrounded by a pack of clucking pilots, red-faced and mortified. Yuta ignores him, as instructed. 

Only Doyoung isn’t fooled. As they’re walking to their assignment later, he brings up Lucas’s comment from earlier, saying, “Alright, tell me what happened?”

“Last night, or back then?”

Doyoung rolls his eyes. “I think everyone knows what happened last night already.”

“Oh, so you mean, in the hanger deck? Nothing honestly. The airlock tripped while we happened to be in there, and then Sicheng tripped over a wire and hurt his ankle… well, but afterwards… in the pilot’s bunkroom… he uh, may or may not have sucked my dick.” 

So yeah, Yuta may have neglected to tell anyone that part. 

Sicheng would have killed him though. 

Probably still will. 

  
  
  



End file.
